Locke, Hume and Bentham

Abstract

In the present chapter, we are concerned with the British political thinkers Locke, Hume and Bentham in relation to international law. Locke is presented as linked together with Hobbes and Pufendorf as an exponent of the natural law conceptualization of the law of nations, and with the focus of discussion being his Two Treatises of Government or, more particularly, the argument set out in the Second Treatise: An Essay concerning the True Original, Extent, and End of Civil Government (1690).1 Hume is presented as a thinker who appealed to the concept of natural law in explanation of the law of nations, but who nevertheless developed positions in ethics and political thought that were deeply subversive of the premises and procedures of established natural law theorizing. The principal work of Hume’s that is discussed is A Treatise of Human Nature (1739–40), but with reference being made also to his Essays, Moral, Political and Literary (1741–42) and An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals (1751).2 Bentham addressed the question of international law in some detail, and he is presented here as a writer where natural law concepts dropped entirely out of consideration in the exposition of international law and where international law, as a subject, came to be placed within the framework of a systematically positivist jurisprudence.